This is not BJP’s week after all. After Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman was called out for her ‘millennial’ remark and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for the ‘Swachhata Hi Seva’ photo-op, Commerce and Industry Minister Piyush Goyal has made an embarrassing gaffe.
While addressing the meeting of the Board of Trade, Goyal said, “Don’t get into calculations about the economy. Don’t get into maths. Maths never helped Einstein discover gravity.”
Goyal, according to India Today, was trying to defend the government against the allegations of economic slowdown. He was answering a question on how projected GDP growth rates don’t seem to align with the $5 trillion-dollar economy mission, the report added.
Twitter was quick to remind him that Einstein DID NOT discover gravity.
If Einstein discovered gravity, what did Newton do? 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔
— aparna (@FuschiaScribe) September 12, 2019
Some are imagining how Newton and Einstein must be feeling after Goyal’s comment:
Some came up with theories of their own on who or how gravity was discovered:
Finance Minister in-waiting says “Einstein discovered gravity”. Mind you – NOT Newton.
Then he says he did so without math.
He’s wrong.
In fact, Modi ji was the one who discovered gravity when he found the extra 2ab in a+b square.
— Saket Gokhale (@SaketGokhale) September 12, 2019
Sitaram Yechury also could not stop himself from taking a dig:
The govt shouldn’t wait for an apple to fall on its head before it realises that the Math about the economy is all bad. It doesn’t even need an Einstein (due apologies to Newton) to tell us that. Instead of focusing on distant dreams, minister would do well to focus on reality. https://t.co/rhegLhpcIf
— Sitaram Yechury (@SitaramYechury) September 12, 2019